Nias language

Nias
Li Niha
Spoken in  Indonesia
Region Nias and Batu Islands, North Sumatra
Native speakers 770,000  (date missing)
Language family
Writing system Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-2 nia
ISO 639-3 nia
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The Nias language is an Austronesian language spoken on Nias Island and the Batu Islands off the west coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. It belongs to the Northwest Sumatran subgroup which also includes Mentawai and the Batak languages.[1] It had about 770,000 speakers in 2000.[1] There are three main dialects: northern, central and southern.[2]

Contents

Grammar

The basic word order in Nias is verb–object–subject, a characteristic shared with Malagasy and the Batak languages. There are no adjectives in Nias, instead verbs are used in their place.[3]

Nias shows consonant mutation at the beginning of nouns and some other classes of words to show grammatical case. Several consonants are subject to mutation as shown in the table below. Where a word begins in a vowel, either n or g is added before the vowel.[3]

Initial mutations
Base form Mutated form
f v
t d
s z
c
k g
b mb
d ndr
vowel n + vowel
g + vowel

Phonology

The southern dialect of Nias has the following phonemes:[3]

Vowels
  Front Сentral Back
Close i u
Mid e ⟨ö⟩ ɤ o
Open a
Consonants
  Labial Dental/
Alveolar		 Palato-
alveolar		 Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m n        
Stop    b t
d
⟨ndr⟩ [dʳ]		 ⟨c⟩ [tʃ]
⟨z⟩ [dʒ]		   k
ɡ		 ⟨'⟩ [ʔ]
Fricative ɸ
β		 s     ⟨kh⟩ [x] h
Approximant ⟨ß⟩ [ʋ] l   ⟨y⟩ [j] w  
Trills ⟨mb⟩ [ʙ] r        

References

  1. ^ a b Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.
  2. ^ Brown, Lea (1997) Nominal Mutation in Nias. In: Odé, Cecilia & Wim Stokhof (1997) Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, Rodopi, Amsterdam. ISBN9042002530.
  3. ^ a b c Brown, Lea (2005) Nias. In: Adelaar, Alexander & Nikolaus P. Himmelmann (eds.) (2005) The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar, Routledge, Abingdon. ISBN0700712860.

External links